


What Takes the Edge Off

by swooning



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swooning/pseuds/swooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief pause while the news sinks in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Takes the Edge Off

It didn't hurt this time. Yet. She had only gone to Cottle because she was feeling tired, thought she might be coming down with something, and he had performed a breast exam because she was about due for one anyway.   
  
It was small, but it was there, and it was growing. Last time it was discovered when things had already progressed to a critical point. It hurt then because the lump was physically large, and was pressing on a tender bundle of nerves, bound tight to that spot by her own skin. She dreamt, more than once, of simply opening her skin up and pulling it out, but she always woke up before she saw what it looked like. Her lump. Her growth.   
  
She recalled that the first time around, she had been waiting for meaning, for a divine revelation about the deeper truth of this growth... and unlike every other woman who suffered this disease and looked for such a message, she actually found that meaning for a time. Looking back, that just seemed silly. The meaning was that she was frightened, she had put off seeing the doctor too long and let the opportunity for effective early treatment pass her by, because she associated cancer with death and she was so good at rationalizing things to herself that she had managed to convince herself there was nothing wrong. It had been an irrational rationalization, an unreasonable use of reason. The cancer was there, whether she believed in it or not. It would kill her, whether she believed in it or not. She was dying because she was dying, not because a prophecy needed to be fulfilled.  
  
This time, she felt vastly unsurprised when Cottle delivered the news. She had known already, in that way of knowing she sometimes had now but was never quite sure when to trust. Sometimes she knew and nothing happened. This time she knew, and the cancer was back. But it didn't hurt yet. It was in a different place, forcing a little dimple in the flesh that concealed it as it burrowed into her soul again, as deadly as it was necessary.   
  
She was not surprised... and she could never have expressed aloud her first reaction to the cancer's return, which was a sense of rightness. Somehow, using the hybrid baby's blood had resulted in an unintended outcome, things veering off course in ways none of them could have foreseen. If she wasn't the dying leader, who was she, after all? When she regained the presidency - Cottle's estimate suggested it was at about that time - she had resumed the  _entire_  course of what was intended in the first place, which meant she must once again be dying. She couldn't have one without the other.  
  
Strange, she thought, that death sounded so very terrible, that people went to such extremes to avoid it even as others risked their lives, lost their lives, every day. Just part of the natural course of things... except when it was  _your own_ death you were considering. That was the difference, the crucial difference this time... she did, indeed, see her death as part of the natural course of things, and to herself she admitted she was actually relieved to be the dying leader again. Being the leader didn't seem right without that qualifier.   
  
"It certainly lights a fire under my ass," she said, shrugging philosophically at Adama. "Didn't know I needed  _more_  of that, but who am I to question the Gods?"   
  
He looked at her over his glasses, grimacing at her flippant fatalism. "Cancer comes back. It doesn't have to be part of some big plan. Maybe it just... sucks. Maybe it's just a really shitty development that could have happened to anyone."   
  
Her smile broadened, in the way he'd come to associate with an imminent stealth attack. "Don't rain on my parade, Bill. It's my tumor, I can call it a gift from the Gods if I want to. Is there any more of that?"   
  
"A little." He poured two fingers' worth of liquor into her glass, then dumped the last few ounces into his own tumbler and put the empty bottle back on the table with a hollow, glassy thunk. "You shouldn't be drinking-"  
  
"Quit." She sipped at the stuff, noting that the crew's skills had improved fairly dramatically since their first efforts at distillation. "At least it takes the edge off."   
  
"As long as you admit there's an edge." He sounded a little triumphant, and Laura rolled her eyes.   
  
"I'm not  _happy_  about  _dying_ , Bill. In fact, let's talk about something else. Anything else."  
  
Bill took a swig of his drink; Laura noticed, as she had before, that he drank more expressively than many men spoke. More expressively, actually, than he himself spoke. "My range of safe topics is a little limited these days."  
  
The understatement, for some reason, struck Laura as funny. She snorted indelicately, unable to suppress it, and giggles took over when she caught the corner of Bill's mouth twitching. She had amused him, made him almost crack a smile, and for tonight it was enough, it counted as hilarity. By the time the fit passed and she collapsed back, weak and sated, on the couch, he was openly grinning. She let her eyes linger for a moment on the curve of his cheeks, the crows' feet arrowing in on the improbable blue of his eyes. It was a genuine Bill-smile, the rarest feat of all.  
  
"Gods, what a coup." She wiped tears from her cheeks with the heel of one hand, secure in the knowledge that her eye makeup had worn off hours ago from the tears that followed the numbness that followed the news from Dr. Cottle.   
  
"What?"  
  
"It's... nothing. Oh, Bill, you know. Just... here we are again."  
  
"Yep."  
  
"Hey."  
  
"Mmm?"  
  
She nodded her head to the spot beside her, and Bill cocked his head to one side for a moment and thought about it, eyes narrowed a little. But the outcome was never really in any doubt. He crossed from the chair he'd been sitting in to the couch, and slid into the spot beside her as smoothly as if he had been there all along. His arm curved around her shoulders and back as if it had been there all along. And Laura, moving her hair out of the way with one neat flick, fit herself along his side with a sigh of contentment.   
  
Rightness. The natural course of things. And Bill's hand, stroking thoughtfully at the back of her waist as he took another sip of his drink, expressed no doubt that their current situation represented the right and natural course of things. His posture, his ease, the way he tipped his glass, all said that whatever the outcome, they would be facing it together. The united front.   
  
There would be times ahead, times they wouldn't want to remember, and already there were not nearly enough good memories to balance out the bad. New Caprica, dismal as it often was, had not lasted nearly long enough to let them all recover. So if this, these stolen moments of comfort, were all that they had left, they would be fools not to make the most of them.   
  
Laura knew it was too late, far too late... they had all proven themselves fools a thousand times over since the destruction of the Colonies. But for now...   
  
She pressed closer to Bill, snuggling in, nestling her face against the weave of his jacket as if the pressure might push the thoughts out of her head. There was an edge, of course there was an edge, and she knew from experience that it took everything a person had to live on it. Nobody would do so, given the choice; she had not been given a choice, of course, and she would give everything she had, and when there was nothing left she would give her life, and in the final analysis that was the only thing that would actually take the edge off ever again. Small wonder that the prospect of death no longer terrified her.   
  
Although she knew she couldn't actually feel the tumor - yet - she was keenly aware of it, a constant and unwanted third presence she had no power to dismiss. But then Bill shifted, and she felt him pressing a kiss to her hair, probably thinking she wouldn't notice. She closed her eyes, feeling blessed by the gesture, an unintended benediction from an unlikely source.   
  
It was not nearly enough. But for now, it was all she had, and it would do. 


End file.
